Ash Tree Dieback

The latest in a long line of diseases that is apparently going to exterminate a species of tree from the English countryside is Ash Tree Dieback caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea. In recent years there have been a number of scares threatening the extinction of various species of tree, including horse chestnuts, oaks, larches etc. etc. The whole idea of losing an entire species of tree, as happened to the Elm in England in the late 20th century is deeply emotionally affecting and has a strong resonance with the British public, for whom the idea of the wild wood is tightly bound with national identity.

The Ash is a mighty tree. If the oak is the symbol of England (and of Germany), the ash is the tree that makes the oak make sense. The oak is proud, resolute, the captain of the team. The ash is the first mate, as grand as the oak, if shorter lived, providing contrast and grounding. "Ash before oak, you're in for a soak, oak before ash it's only a splash."

In winter, the silvery greenish bark of an ash is clean and youthful even amongst the mud and leaves of the dead season. The black buds hold mystical significance for those who are tuned into them, and the seeds (called keys) are familiar to any child due to their helicoptering aerobatics. The ash is an important and well-loved tree. Fraxinus excelsior indeed.

We all feel we have a stake in the continued existence of the ash. We all feel like the wood simply being there is something that is owed to us, a duty that beholds God to us. Nature has a responsibility to provide us with ash trees.

Vanity. Agathon said: "Own nothing it would grieve you to give to another." If we suffer because of this, it is to our own egos that we must look. The ownership we feel over the ash, the identities we have formed that use the ash as an integral unit; these we must be willing to drop if need be. To worry or get upset over the future of the ash is a lesson to look within and remember what ownership is.

I sincerely hope that the ashes survive this threat. We should do everything we can to help them. We should allocate money and resources to this problem. I believe that even with limited resources we have a good chance of containing the disease, and also that there is a good chance we have over-emphasized the potential harm. But, in the end, if the ashes die, it's OK. I am proud to have been alive to know the woods of England in the 1990s. And I will be proud to greet the forests of 2020, no matter who lives there then. Own nothing it would grieve you to give to another. If the ashes are taken I will still be smiling.